Does Listening to Audiobooks Count as Reading? Vergecast Hosts Debate a Hot Topic

"Does listening to audiobooks really count as reading?" This seemingly simple question sparks unusually fierce debate in reading communities. On a recent episode of The Vergecast podcast, the hosts engaged in an honest debate on the topic, with one host offering a definition broad enough to try to put this long-running argument to rest.

The Core Argument: Reading Is Consuming Words

The central argument on the show was straightforward: the essence of reading is consuming words, not having your eyes scan across paper. In the host's own words: "I think reading is any act where you're consuming words. That's how I'd put it." By this definition, reading physical books, flipping through magazines, and reading comics all count as reading; and when you listen to an audiobook, you're likewise "consuming words," so it should fall under the umbrella of reading too.

The beauty of this definition is that it sidesteps the fixation on medium and goes straight to the functional essence of the act. Whether words are printed on paper in ink or delivered to your ears as sound waves, the information your brain processes is language itself. From this perspective, agonizing over "using your eyes" versus "using your ears" doesn't change the core of the act.

"I Finished a Book — I'll Say I've Read It"

The host went further and shared their own practice: after finishing an audiobook, they mark it directly as "read" on Goodreads. This detail is telling—in readers' actual habits, audiobooks and print books share the same reading-record system and aren't categorized separately.

This practice also reflects the actual ecosystem of reading communities. Platforms like Goodreads don't have a separate counting logic for audiobooks, and readers don't feel like they're "cheating." When users default to counting audiobooks toward their annual reading goals, the focus of the debate has effectively shifted from "does it count" to "are you willing to admit it."

Goodreads is a reading social network and book-tracking platform owned by Amazon, where users can mark books as "want to read," "currently reading," or "read," and write ratings and reviews. Its annual Reading Challenge counts "read" entries and is a common tool for readers setting yearly reading goals. Because the platform is organized around "works" rather than "editions," the print, ebook, and audiobook versions of the same book typically share a single entry, and listeners who mark an audiobook as "read" aren't treated differently by the system. This product design objectively reinforces the default consensus that "audiobooks are reading," and serves as a real-world footnote to the article's argument.

The Opposition: "Isn't It Just Listening to a Book?"

Of course, the opposing view isn't entirely without merit. The show mentioned a common objection: "People will say, okay, it's just a book, you're just listening to it, it's just a hobby." This line of argument implies that listening to audiobooks is easier and has a lower bar than "really" reading.

The host's response was quite forceful: listening to audiobooks also demands intense focus. "You really have to be fully attentive to listen to an audiobook." Anyone who has listened while commuting has probably experienced this—lose focus for a moment and you have to rewind and listen again. By contrast, when you drift off while reading a print book, you can glance back over the paragraph and find your place; with an audiobook, once you miss something, it's a complete blank.

A More Subtle Argument About Time Cost

The debate also surfaced an easily overlooked angle: listening to an audiobook can take more time than reading a print book. The host noted that listening to an audiobook often took longer than reading it directly, "I'm investing more time in consuming this work."

This means that if you measure the legitimacy of reading by "level of investment," audiobook listeners aren't slacking—they're actually putting in more time. Audiobook playback speed is constrained by the narrator's pacing, and listeners can't skim quickly or skip passages the way they can when reading, so in a sense they're forced to experience every detail of the text more completely.

Audiobook length is usually measured in "listening time," which doesn't correspond linearly to the actual word count of the text. Narration speed is typically around 150–160 words per minute, while the silent reading speed of an average adult can reach 200–300 words per minute, so the audio version of the same book often takes longer than reading it yourself. In addition, the 1.25x, 1.5x, or even 2x playback speeds offered by players change this comparison, but the impact of sped-up listening on comprehension and memory remains debated. Researchers typically compare the two modalities using two sets of measures—"reading comprehension" and "listening comprehension"—and find that for narrative texts, comprehension levels are similar, while for high-density expository texts, the immediate backtracking cost in the auditory channel is higher. This explains why audiobook listeners often need to rewind and re-listen, and it supports the article's argument about "investing more time."

Why This Debate Deserves Serious Attention

What keeps this debate going is really a question of stance on reading promotion. The host's summary hit the key point: if society's consensus is that "people need to read more," then we shouldn't nitpick over "what counts as reading."

"If someone only wants to listen to audiobooks, are you really going to tell them that doesn't count as reading? That seems a bit absurd to me." This statement reveals the substance of the controversy—when declining reading rates become a widespread anxiety, setting a higher bar that excludes some readers benefits no one. Rather than arguing over the purity of the medium, it's better to acknowledge the diverse forms of word consumption and let more people be willing to enter the world of books.

Judging from this Vergecast discussion, the hosts' position was quite clear: listening to audiobooks counts as reading, and this view was described on the show as "obvious." As for those still agonizing over it, the show offered straightforward advice—it's time to move on.

One-line Summary

The host argues that the essence of reading is consuming words, so listening to audiobooks counts as reading too.

Paragraph Summary

The article centers on the classic reading-community debate over "whether listening to audiobooks counts as reading," drawing on the hosts' discussion on The Vergecast podcast. The core argument is that the essence of reading is consuming words, not having your eyes scan across paper, so audiobooks should fall within the scope of reading. The host supports this position with their practice of marking audiobooks as "read" on Goodreads. In response to the objection that "listening to a book is just a hobby," the article points out that listening to audiobooks also demands intense focus, and that losing focus can be even more costly than with print books; it adds a time-cost angle, noting that audiobooks are constrained by narration pacing and often take longer than reading directly. The article closes on a reading-promotion stance: if the goal is to encourage people to read more, we shouldn't set barriers over "what counts as reading" and exclude listeners.